


Singed Feathers - Plumiere Fic Compilation

by beknighted



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: Buckle up kids, F/M, I need Plumiere to breathe so here is my fresh air, holy shit prepare for whimsy and French stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 09:33:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11377449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beknighted/pseuds/beknighted
Summary: BONJOUR. Some of these may be longer than others, and some more ridiculous than others. But the words swirling around in my skull regarding these two dorks MUST BE EXPELLED. Enjoy.





	1. Overture

He was seventeen, penniless, well-dressed, and thoroughly in love with life. 

But that was the way of men at his time. Although you could hardly call him a man; he had the face and heart of a boy, and a cleverly foolish one. The odd passerby--odd, for it was a long and wooded stretch of road--wondered absently what had made him, with his black and curly hair neatly kempt, so happy.

And whose clothes he might have stolen. 

For he was all fine, if threadbare, broderie; cream and gold and buttons, for in his cleverly foolish way he knew that what you needed in this world were simply good manners and good clothes, and bref, you could get anywhere! 

He sang at the top of his voice as he went. There was little else to do. 

He had begun life in privilege and come of age a pauper in a city of smoke and sickness, but it was a sunny day in May and so: he sang. 

A horse bolted onto the road, tossing its head.  
It was still saddled. The young man dropped his bag. 

“Ho!” he cried, and the creature flinched, skittering back. He waited. “Calme-toi! What’s your hurry, sir?” 

The horse looked to be more spirited than spooked, not seeming to want to chat, but it had no objection to his approach apart from a low whinny. He caught hold of its head as gently as he could. A loose hold on the reins and a soft word, and it calmed, looking fixedly at him with a large, wet eye. 

“Alain! Alain, you colt, where have you got to?”

Almost as suddenly as the horse, there was a woman on the road, her face flushed. She was beautiful, to be sure. And sad. Perhaps five or six winters his senior. The young man looked first at the horse and then at her queenly array, her silk and commode, and bowed deeply. 

“Mademoiselle, your horse,” he said to his feet.

“At your ease,” the woman said, like a captain. When he straightened he could see she was smiling. “My thanks, monsieur. Alain must have a quarrel with oak stumps, or maybe an altogether unadventurous pause to pick a flower.”

She had the reins in seconds, swinging up onto the horse’s back before the man could offer assistance or counsel against such a thing. “You are a horseman, young man?” 

“Ah, non, mademoiselle,” he said, grinning. “I am a vagabond.” He bowed again. “Lumière. At your service.” 

“A charming vagabond.” 

“Hardly, mademoiselle.” But he was, and he knew it. 

There came the muffled drumming of hoofbeats, and a second horse reached them, stopping short with a small avalanche of mud from recent rain. 

The young man had to do a bit of a mad dash to avoid being spattered. 

“The master calls you home, my Lady Françoise!” the rider exclaimed. 

“Whatever for?” 

“You fled without a word, mistress,” said the rider, emphatically. “Into the woods, no less.” 

The Lady’s face looked turbulent for a moment, half in and out of shadow from broken light of the trees, and he thought she might fly into a temper. She did not, instead flying into a fit of coughing, the lavande bloom behind her ear falling to the ground. 

Lumière flinched. The gray streets he had left had been thick with this sound. 

“I will come when I please,” she said, in a different tone. “Go, Chapeau. Will you walk with me?”

The self-proclaimed vagabond realized the Lady was speaking to him from on high. “If you wish, madame.” 

“I take it you are looking for work?” 

After a reluctant pause, the hoof-beats of young Chapeau’s horse faded into the distance, the woodland chorus of insects swallowing them up. They followed, the queen and the vagabond, and the young man picked up his bag as he passed. As it so happened he was not, in fact, looking for work--but in what world did someone save a horse and win himself a situation? 

“Certainly. Of course.” 

“We need a footman, monsieur,” she said. 

“Fantastique!” he said. Somehow, his step acquired more buoyancy. Then, “What does a footman do?” 

“Do you not know?” 

“Wear a wig,” Lumière said, “and be in a general hurry. But beyond that, no.” 

She laughed. “Consider that our briefest interview.” 

Merde. 

“I can learn,” he said quickly. “I have served in households before, madame, just never as a footman. If you--”

“Please,” the Queen said, “I am a pupil of spontaneity. Your smile is a friendly one, that is enough for now. I will arrange for a proper interview.” 

With that, they left the relative shade, and a flood of May sunshine set them to blinking and squinting in the open air. A castle of great stone and height spread before them. He fought the urge to sing again, as he had on the road, or run, or something. He had been walking for far too long. 

⚜⚜⚜

There was something bright and surpassingly exciting about living in a castle. Yes, there was the grandeur, and the twilight shafts of light encrimsoned by stained glass, and the enumerable passageways, the host of candles, but more importantly he had an awful habit of sliding down bannisters. He even found he had a métier besides making a spectacle of himself, and that was folding napkins just so. 

Thus, Lumière, a young man who had left his family name on a forest road, was captivated. Everyone was in everyone else’s orbit, an ordered chaos which he could disrupt at just the perfect times. 

First, the old major domo, the brusque and meticulous Cogsworth, was simultaneously charmed by any deliberate show of attention and miffed by his furtive bannister-sliding habits.

Chapeau, the messenger on horseback, was rather mute. Lumière got a smile out of him once.

“It was more likely indigestion,” said Cogsworth. 

“That is flagrant confabulation,” said Lumière. 

The young housekeeper Mrs. Potts was an excellent source of tea and sympathy, but he did not care for either and thought she was wonderful. She reliably lectured him about bewitching maids. Had he been much younger he might have instated her as his mother, but grown men cannot admit to such things. 

“Pearly smiles do not work on me,” the housekeeper tutted. Pearly smiles always did. 

The Queen became a ghost. Hélas! Lumière could not tell if it was for want of flight, of stifled rebellion, or her ebbing life. She passed between rooms and that was all. There was something gentle and quiet about the staff when they were around her, as if she were a wilting flower and the slightest disturbance could break the slender stem. 

It was around this time Lumière stopped seeing the wispy boy they served as a rather quiet prince with a distracting habit of disappearing, and instead as an unmoored fellow with very little by way of comfort. 

“Who’s there?” 

The boy had gathered the sheets around him like a snowdrift, looking small in a canopy bed much too big for him, and very pale in the darkness. Lumière had opened the door. A warm light from the flame he carried cast back the chill of the room, just barely. 

“Pardon, Master,” he said. 

“Who is it?” 

“Lumière, Master. I heard you in a bit of distress.” 

“Yes? And?” 

The young Prince’s eyes were coins in the gloom, still blindly afraid. Lumière raised the candles higher, giving the smallest of waves. A pause, and the little boy waved back. 

“I thought you might like a little light, non? The wind has blown yours out,” he said. He smiled. “I am no stranger to nightmares.” 

Before the young lord could protest, Lumière found his way across the empty cold of the room and relit the candles on the bedside cabinet, and then whisked to the window to shut it, and left with the same brisk French determination.

The years passed in flashes, momentary presence, exchanges of words and light. 

Then she arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little longer than intended - Plumiere is coming, I promise!


	2. Overture Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't really know what this is. The genesis of Plumiere?

Lovely things often begin unheeded. Lumière so happened to be conducting himself as something of a valet that day, giving the King an even wider berth than usual, for he was as likely to serve without complaint as lose his situation when the King was in this sort of mood. The West Wing was like a storm, and all of the servants were fleet-footed and skittish, like horses showing the whites of their eyes. 

The dim, early morning hush of the entrance hall seemed to ignite as the door was opened.

They met amidst stone and marble, in a thawing winter. 

“Mademoiselle.” 

She was ushered in. How very wonderful of her to have come in the front entrance like gentry; in her silhouette’s dark poise and white traveling mantle, she looked the part.

“If I were not subject to daily calendrical updates,” said Lumière, his voice sounding rather distant to himself, “I might have mistaken you for visiting royalty.”

“If you were not a Frenchman,” she said dryly, permitting him to kiss her hand, “I might have mistaken you for the castle’s lord.” 

“Lumière,” he bowed. 

“Plumette,” she curtsied.

Oh cher, she is a dancer. 

He looked about in a confidential way with the intentions of warning her about said castle’s lord, but the major domo arrived with his notorious timing, suppressing a yawn. Cogsworth seemed to realize that his good-natured interrogation of the new maid had acquired an audience, a shadow, for Lumière found himself trailing after them looking slightly winded. 

His first and greatest love had been Life itself, but it was Plumette that supplanted it and breezily made herself at home in its place. 

⚜⚜⚜

First: he became a connoisseur of finding dust. If there appeared even the faintest veneer of it, Lumière would materialize in some mischievous sunbeam or from behind a door and inform Plumette in all seriousness. S'il vous plaît, mademoiselle…

Second: the infamous dances began, a crucial component of the young prince’s education. Yes, there was the rotating arsenal of tutors, the library, the occasional glimpse of chivalrous training on the castle green (some vestige of the age of knights, long passed), but the King in his decadence knew that high society would only welcome one of their own. 

Hence, the dances. Dances make a civilized man of a pensive little boy. 

There were the hours of preparation, the feverish cleaning headed by Mrs. Potts and the gruff micromanaging from Cogsworth and the tendency of several of the cooks to burst into tears and oaths when the King inevitably changed the menu. There was the shouting, the roaring, for the King wanted to see his face shining in that floor, and conveying of messages to every corner of the castle, the tight-lipped welcoming of guests, the flinging open of windows.

It was all thrilling and magnificent; somptueux. It made one feel immortal. 

And yet, in the heart of the castle and unseen to the world’s eyes, the Queen was fading. Faster, now, than she had before. Lumière knew that, when it looked as though he would go unnoticed, the prince slipped away to his mother’s side and sat in the thick silence that surrounds all dying people. In the halls below, however, the swells of music and swirling forms were like a dream. 

But they could never dance, the servants. 

They stood at attention and watched the dream from afar, as they ought. 

Or rather, Lumière watched Plumette. She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was almost sure she liked it. He was aware of dark glowing skin and eyes and her white gown and wig, which was lovelier than anything the noblewomen spun by in. She stood, perhaps, on the edge of her toes. About to take flight. But to where? And would she take him with her? 

They danced eventually, but in the hallway outside, with the music muffled. 

They laughed.

One night, she vanished in the midst of a waltz. 

He might have been too bold to search for her (perhaps even unreasonable--but he had never been a reasonable man). Yet find her he did, on a balcony, some artifact of a star-strewn Renaissance, all silver and still. Lumière stood framed in the door way, his wig slightly askew, but he didn't notice. Eddies of music slipped up through the windows below, the cracks in the stone. 

"There were never this many stars in Paris," she said softly, without looking back. "Mon dieu. I didn't know there was this many." 

"I felt that way too," he said. "When I left." 

"I thought you might be from Paris," Plumette said, and seemed to be smiling. "I could hear home when you spoke." 

Lumière joined her on the balcony. They were young, and ever so slightly wild, and friends, drunk on the heady mixture of summer and hard work. He had hoped they might be friends. And someday... "I'm glad you're here, Plumette," he said. He is young, and ever so slightly wild, and not such a weaver of words just yet. He fights the silence to find the perfect way to echo the stars, to put new stars in her eyes. "I am glad to have...someone to dance with. I hear the music more now." 

"You mean to tell me you haven't danced every member of the staff senseless by now, monsieur," Plumette's face brightened with mischief. 

"Touché, mon ami." 

Plumette's spell was a lovely thing to be under, and it would endure a long time yet. Perhaps forever. They watched the stars dance as surely as they did the swirling forms and gentry below and were none the wiser for it, but all the lovelier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah yes, I love spewing plotless poetic nonsense! More to come.


End file.
